A convocation of worms was written between March and June, 1995. The words are taken from the 20^th play in the Coventry Cycle of mystery plays, the manuscript of which is in the British Museum and dates from 1468. The play deals with the Massacre of the Innocents: when Herod’s soldiers come to report to him that they have carried out his orders and slaughtered all the young male children in Israel, he calls for food and wine, and they sit down and celebrate. Herod tells his musicians:

“Among all that great rout,

He is dead, I have no doubt,

Therefore, minstrel, roundabout

Blow up a merry fitt.”

At this point the figure of Death appears on stage, strikes Herod and his soldiers dead, and delivers a chilling speech about human vanity and the fragility of life. The Latin stage-direction, which I have set as an introduction, tells us that while the musicians are playing a fanfare to celebrate Herod’s triumph Death kills him and his soldiers, and the Devil takes them down to Hell.

The words are a powerful reminder of physical mortality, and of the ever-present reality of death in fifteenth-century Europe – which still applies in the poorer countries of the world. In 1995 I was living in a village in the Akwapim hills in south-eastern Ghana, and had become almost inured to the deaths of people of all ages from diseases which - at little cost - could have been prevented or treated. When people have no reserves, Death is never far away.

Given the background of the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War, it is no wonder that the Dance of Death became such a powerful obsession for artists of the later Middle Ages. This piece, in essence, is a Dance of Death for our time.

 2006 Giles Swayne